


Fire

by DreamingState



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: F/M, Ghosts, Mention of Russia, Mentions of war and death, mild AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-15
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2018-03-01 14:07:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2775824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamingState/pseuds/DreamingState
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lithuania finds Belarus in an unexpected place</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire

**Author's Note:**

> This piece got away from me. Much apologies.   
> Natalya = Belarus  
> Ignas = Lithuania (Because I like the name sue me)

Morning painted Vilnius in soft colors, washed out by the smog to look like a watercolor painting. It was quiet at this hour, dead in the moments before the earliest citizens began to wake. It was early enough that he was alone at his table, the single barista yawning behind the counter being an exception. His cigarette hung by two fingers casually at his side, and only rarely took it to his lips, as he frequently forgot its existence. Half of it had burned off without him noticing, and he looked at it with a sigh. Cigarettes were expensive, especially when you went through them as fast as any self-respecting Slav, and he didn’t really feel like spending the money to replace what had been so carelessly wasted. While he liked to act as if he were above such mundane things, even he felt the tight choking grip on his wallet, and wanted to hold on to what he had. His hand lifted towards his lips, drawing the cigarette to his mouth like a painter with his brush so he could suck in a long mouthful of air before exhaling the smoke to join the fog coating Vilnius this morning.

He took a sip of his coffee, but the chill autumn air had sapped its heat. His eyes narrowed at the cup, like it had offended him, but took a deep dreg of it anyway. At least he’d remembered his coat and scarf this time, or else he’d be out here shivering. It seemed like just yesterday he could wear a light shirt and maybe a jacket or vest, but now they were hurtling towards winter again at an astounding rate. Most would have probably fled towards the equator at this point, after realizing how far off their internal calendar was from the natural shifting of the planet, but Lithuania was his home. He was born here, and here he would stay until he rotted.

Tragically few stayed behind these days. It was sad to see the young leave abandon their ancestral homes and flee towards the new world, where no European had been around long enough to create their own insidious culture. He doubted those children really understood the sacrifice they were making, or if they would until they saw how their children would grow up as just another faceless tally mark of the Western World’s population census. Of course, at first glance anyone would think Ignas was just as young and foolish as they, but appearances could be deceiving.

The barest scent of death on the wind spoiled the taste of his coffee, and he wrinkled his nose. It wasn’t so much the stench of rotting flesh, but the general aura of the underworld oozing around old cities such as these. Every Slavic country saw its share of wartime and tragedy, trapped between the powers of Germany and Russia in both world wars. The walls of Vilnius might as well have been painted in blood. Perhaps this was the reason most children of Lithuania left. Even if they couldn’t smell it, or sense it, maybe they felt it as a touch in the back of their souls to make them shiver. The dead haunted nearly every street and every building of this city.

If he closed his eyes, he could nearly see them. The memories of the long departed lingered far longer than their physical forms, and walked along the paths they’d so often tread in life. They were trapped in an endless pattern like a wind-up toy on a track, with little heed to the lives of the living. But even they, stuck in their lifetime patterns as they were, heeded the spinning of the planet, so for the most part, they too had cleared the area. He’d thought he was at peace, but always some lingering spirit caught his attention just as he’d begun to relax. Frankly, it was exhausting.

He tipped his wax-lined coffee cup up so he could drink down the rest of the cold coffee in one sip. At least this way, it went down easily. With the bitter taste of coffee on his tongue, he could almost ignore the staring eyes of the dead little girl across the street, war torn and bloody in her specter. There was nothing he could do to help her, so her watching gaze made him deeply uncomfortable. However, there was nowhere else to go where the ghosts and spirits wouldn’t follow him, so he might as well get used to it here. For one such as Ignas, peace was a rare thing.

The cigarette turned to ash between his fingers, scalding his skin before he had the thought to release the scattered bits to the ground. Another one, wasted. His fix still hadn’t been sated, but it was far too early to light another, wasn’t it? The pack was tantalizing in his pocket, practically begging Ignas to take a cigarette out and light it. But even if he did, wouldn’t this one wind up as wasted as the last? They burned too fast, hovering on the edges of his perception so he didn’t notice the loss until it was too late. It was a wonder why he even bothered.

So involved with his inner dilemma was he that he nearly missed the familiar sound of heels clicking on cobblestone until she nearly passed him by. Luckily for him, he snapped out of his reverie soon enough to catch a glimpse of platinum hair pulled back too tight at the back of her head, and long skirts hiding boots he knew held at least one knife with which to protect herself if the need arose.

“Natalya!” he said, standing so fast the chair wobbled on two legs before finally crashing down to the stone with a loud clatter.

The woman flinched, startled, and swung her face around to look at him wide-eyed, her sharp features made to look like a deer stumbled upon in the woods. He gathered his composure was no more in place than hers. The shock had him frozen too, like a wire stretched between them and freezing them both in its current. Vaguely, he noticed the sticky stain his coffee cup had caused when he’d jostled the table, and took a moment to pick the cup back up and right it. But this distraction could not keep him very long, and his eyes found their way back to this returned specter of his past. Caught in the moment the thought came to him that she might be long dead and haunting him too, but her face looked just as he remembered it, both colorless and severe, icy eyes piercing right into his soul with her lips pressed into a thin line. A scar traced under her jawbone where she’d fallen in a fight when they were kids. Angry and spitting blood, she’d picked up a rock and gone right back after her assailant. He’d loved her then There was a freckle near the small lines gathered on the sides of her lips, annunciating her permanent frown. She was real, and she was here. No doubt about it.

He opened his mouth to speak again, but his mouth had abruptly gone dry, causing him to choke on his words. A spasm of coughing broke the spell, and Natalya took a step back, crossing her arms over her chest and holding onto herself tight. Heat flooded his ears as he’d realized that he’d most likely scared her. He cleared his throat one more time and knelt to right the fallen chair, checking the back to make sure no scratches had come from its fall to the pavement. When his eyes returned to her, Natalya had taken a step back and was looking around, trying to find an exit most likely, while being unsure if she wanted to flee in the first place. His heart ached in his chest, he’d missed her so much, but it seemed even now, she could not find it within her to relax.

“Do you want a cigarette?” he asked, noting how her shoulders lost a touch of their tension at the suggestion.

She nodded, and allowed him to approach her so that he could offer the cigarette package from his pocket. She tapped a single cigarette out of the package with strong, practiced gestures, and then held it out toward him, perching the cigarette awkwardly on two fingers as if unsure what to do with it. He offered her the lighter gently, which she took gratefully. With the satisfying metallic click of the lighter, Natalya delicately sparked the end of her cigarette and took a deep drag, filling her lungs. She held onto it, savoring the sensation before and then releasing the smoke in a cloud. Ignas fantasized for a moment that the smoke from her mouth would meet his in the air and mingle together, but soon reality returned.

“Won’t you take one too?”

The question should have been anticipated, but instead caught him by surprise. His mind scrambled for the correct response, and he had to clear his throat again before he could speak.

“I just had one. Earlier. It’s too soon for another,” he said, and then realized how foolish he sounded. It was strange; he’d known her since they were children, but still he found himself playing the part of the besotted companion. In his awkwardness, he lifted a hand to the side of his face, brushing back a lost strand of hair, fidgeting with it for a moment. The distraction gave him time to collect his composure, and once the hair was tucked away behind his ear, he gave her an apologetic smile.

Natalya, for her part, no longer seemed as intent on fleeing. She held the cigarette carefully between her fingers, as delicately as one might a butterfly, and cupped her other hand around the flame so the wind wouldn’t blow it out. After the first drag, she took shallow little puffs, the smoke from her lips scattering into tiny clouds. Watching her gave back a bit of his composure, seeing her relax and unknot her muscles had a mirror effect on him.  She was so elegant, each of her movements calculated and precise, but gave the image of a heron striding through water. Perhaps it was true he was still a little infatuated with her after all this time. It was hard not to be, with one like her.

“I didn’t expect to see you in Vilnius,” he said, cautiously approaching the topic. She stiffened, and he froze in response.

“Minsk is… Minsk is no longer…” her face screwed up, as if feeling physical pain.

“No longer safe,” he finished, and she nodded.

“No longer safe,” she said.

They stood in silence, and Ignas’ eyes tracked the progress of the flame eating her cigarette. Unlike him, she was very aware of its progress, tapping ash onto the street every now and again, and taking calculated inhales of smoke. The ghost girl on the other side of the street watched the ashes as they crumbled to the ground and blew into the air. He wondered if she was remembering times of war, of bombs and torched buildings, people dying at the hands of the Germans and Soviets who were so eager to get at one another, families being crushed under the heels of empires. Poor child. The world had moved on, but she would always be trapped in the same era, always in the hell of the great wars. Of course, it could always be worse. Worse was always on the way.

“I am glad you feel safe in Vilnius,” he said to break the silence, finally pulling his eyes away from the cigarette and the ghost girl. “However, I don’t think it’s far enough from Him.”

Even such a vague mention was too much, and she visibly flinched. The cigarette took a turn towards the ground and almost slipped from her grasp, but she caught it just in time. However, her grip was too strong, and the last few inches of the cigarette bent in her fingers. She stared at it, uncomprehending, until he held the pack up to her again, offering a replacement. The corner of her lip twitched into an almost-smile as she tapped another cigarette out of the package and lit it.

“Are you not afraid where you are?” she asked, her eyes imploring. So direct. Her words cut as deeply as her gaze and he had to fight to catch his breath.

“I do not have as much to be concerned of as you. He may seek to possess me again, but his desire to consume me is much less than his of you.”

She shuddered, and sucked in a strong gulp of cigarette smoke.

“He is an insatiable pig. I will never again be his,” she said, her eyes as sharp as daggers. The spark in her spirit made his heart jump.

‘ _Oh no,_ ’ he thought to himself. ‘ _I’m falling in love again._ ’

After her outburst, she quieted again, and he waited patiently for her to warm up again.

“I… he…” her words came hesitantly and she shifted her wait to one side and then the other again. Her discomfort was palpable, and he found himself taking a deep breath and holding it, as if he were trying not to scare a wild animal.

“I can’t see them anymore,” she said, and all of the air sucked itself out of his lungs as if from a vacuum.

“..You mean-”

“Yes.” She nodded, and sucked so deeply on her cigarette that half of it burned away in an instant.

He shot a look at the ghost girl across the street, wondering if she knew or if she even cared who could see her and who couldn’t. It wasn’t always pleasant, being able to see the dead, but it was a part of him. Seeing them was as natural as watching leaves fall, or water spiraling down the drain. The thought of having the sight taken away from him cut him like a knife. It would be akin to losing an arm, or his ears. It was a part of him like the organs making up his body. A cold numbness started in the pit of his stomach, spreading chill out through his extremities until his hands no longer registered feeling. They were shaking.

“How did he… was it him?” he asked finally, hoping the horror on his face was better contained.

“I don’t know. But when I escaped, they were gone.”

Tap tap tap and ash tumbled to the pavement.

“You don’t think…” his words caught and he had to force them through. “If your sight is gone then you could be-”

“Mortal,” she said. “I don’t know.”

“How can you not _know?_ ” he asked, his words falling from his mouth heavier than he’d intended. Her gaze cut him.

“I don’t know yet, and I will not take a chance.” She sucked in another lungful of smoke. “If I am… mortal and he finds a way to kill me, well. I will not be there when he comes to find me.”

“I’ll come with you,” Ignas said, surprised to find that he meant it. If it was her, he’d go anywhere, do anything. It didn’t matter. “We will leave. South Africa, Brazil, Peru. Antartica. Anywhere.”

Already, though, she was shaking her head.

“Don’t leave your life here for me. I’ll go. If you are comfortable then there is no need to sacrifice it for me.”

“Bullshit!” The harshness of his tone startled her, and her two prim eyebrows shot towards her hairline. “If it’s to keep you safe, I’d go anywhere. Don’t leave me here to worry about you. What if something happened and I never-”

He couldn’t complete the sentence, but he didn’t have to. Her gaze softened, less glacial and more like the ice spread over a pond in wintertime, paper-thin.

“I cannot control you,” she said.

“Nor I you. Nor would I try to. If you truly don’t want me by your side, I will stay. But if you will have me, I’d like to be by your side.”

A sharp gust cut between them, and the light on the end of Natalya’s cigarette blew out suddenly. She sighed upon seeing it, but she wouldn’t ask for a light.

She would never request anything. Like when she was a child, it was something that she had to be led into, delicately and calmly. He waited.

“I. I would not mind company. If the company were willing, and not a nuisance…”

His smile was spreading before she had finished her words, and he leaned forward to put his hands on either side of her face and kiss her cheeks. She froze solid, shocked and petrified at his sudden nearness, and the moment he realized he dropped his hands and took a step back. The eyes of the ghost girl across the street widened.

“I apologize. I was overcome with-”

“It’s fine!” she said, her words sharp, but her cheeks had begun to take the color of a light rose, and she looked away.

Ignas found a smile on his face. He’d known her long enough to read her emotions and know he couldn’t have offended her. But she was such a reserved person he should have known better to begin with.

“Truly, I am. When we are traveling, I promise, there will be no more of that,” he said, and she nodded crisply.

“Alright. I accept your terms.”

“This isn’t business, Natalya.”

“I am aware!” Again, the hint of a flush. Beautiful.

She looked down at the blown out edge of her cigarette and sighed dejectedly.

“Here, do you need a light?” he asked, and she nodded.

The hand holding the cigarette extended itself delicately out towards him, and he reached out with his lighter and lit the spark between them.

The ghost girl watched.


End file.
